Mr. Bloomfield's Orchard

There is a reason I go to the library, and it is not to read books that have any relevance to my life. I go in to be surprised. And lucky me, I came out with the best book I have read in ages. Mr. Bloomfield's Orchard isn't just what the title states-- The mysterious world of mushrooms, molds, and mycologists --but really an analysis on human curiosity and discovery.

I never for once thought that mushrooms could be so exciting (and I miss the non-fiction novel, I should really read Stiff one more time). Bloomfield tells a story about how one of his colleagues left him a mushroom to identify. Well, Mr. Bloomfield had an appetite, so he cooked it into a stew and ate it for dinner. The colleague returned and asked him if he had identified the Boletus satanus, Satan's bolete, that he had left on Bloomfield's desk. "Amazed at my evident health, he walked away shaking his head. Satan's bolete cannot kill a mule, but it can make people shit themselves senseless...however, before swearing of all mushrooms, it is useful to acknowledge that products as innocent as Wonder bread probably have some detractors." I cannot explain my love for Mr. Bloomfield, just as I cannot explain my love for Ken Jennings's blog.

In the first chapter Mr. Bloomfield explains the nature of an oddly phallic like mushroom called the Stinkhorn. He recounts the story Charles Darwin's daughter, "For Victorians in England, sufficiently obsessed with sex to become excited by table legs, their appearance was too much to bear. As a mature woman, Charles Darwin's daughter Etty so despised stinkhorns that she mounted an anti-fungal jihad with the aid of gloves and a pointed stick. She burned the collections in secret, thereby protecting the purity of thought among her female servants." It is surprising that a mycologist could be so eccentric as to make me enjoy the study of mushrooms, as he says, "Even high school students are familiar with the warty, black zygospores of zygomycetes, although they spend far more time defiling textbook diagrams of human anatomy than understanding fungi." Haha

Wow, that was one big block quote, but still, Mr. Bloomfield is awesome :)
On a better note, this week I read Oscar Wilde's "The Nightingale and the Rose." It was sad, ironic, and painful. Sardonically beautiful.

(And I've also realized that Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" advocates women to shut-up and look pretty)